Join Labor Network for Sustainability during our #Labor4Climate2020 membership drive.

Let’s move forward together in 2020 as LNS continues to address key issues that shape the labor-climate movement:

Pictured: Reps from the North Carolina AFL-CIO State Executive Board who supported the #ClimateStrikes that took place on Friday, Dec. 6. Back row (R-L): Andre Barnett, United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW) 1208; Daniel Dashman, International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE); Angelita Morrisroe, Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC); Darla McGlamery, IATSE 491; Leticia Zavala, FLOC; Yvonne Kinston, Communications Workers of America (CWA) 3680; Grant Welch, CWA 3611; Andrew (Roo) Oyaas, IATSE; Corey Hill, United Automobile Workers 3520; Terrence Dewberry, Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU) 1328; Aiden Graham, NC State AFL-CIO. Front Row (R-L): Tim Rorie, National Association of Letter Carriers (NALC) Southern Piedmont Central Labor Councils President; Essie Hogue, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) 1738; Craig Schadewald, NALC; Denicia Montford Williams (holding the sign), North Carolina A. Philip Randolph Institute (NC APRI); Rob Axford, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers 553; Teddy McNeal, International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAMAW); Vernon Gammon, International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) 391
Rick Armstrong, IBT 391; Scott Thrower, IBEW 379.

Public transit is a civil right—and a strategy to combat climate change. February 4 – Rosa Park’s birthday—LNS and allies are again organizing participation around the country in Transit Equity Day.

Today! Join us for the Social Media Launch of Transit Equity Day – the day before the 1956 Supreme Court victory for the Montgomery Bus Boycott that ordered the racial integration of the Montgomery bus system. Click here to access our info and registration page to share to your social media channels »

Thousands of people in the U.S. are organizing campaigns through their unions and organizations to support public transit in their communities. Transit Equity Day is a way to support and connect those activities. Please register your activity here so we can keep track of and lift up your efforts. Email us at TransitEquity@labor4sustainability.org if you have any questions.

Here are some ideas of activities you can organize on Transit Equity Day whether you are part of an existing campaign or not: 

EDUCATE!

Convene an educational event about public transit as a civil right and as a key strategy to confront climate change. Wear a button or sticker to your workplace showing support for public transit as a civil right. Get an op-ed published in your local newspaper.

AGITATE!

Organize a direct action to support a local campaign for quality public transit for all.

ORGANIZE!

Get your union local, organization city council, transportation board and others to pass a resolution supporting public transportation as a civil right. Get your union to establish a climate action committee.

New Statement of Principles Can Help Unify Transit Equity Movement

The collaborative network of groups leading Transit Equity Day has issued this statement of Transit Equity Day Principles that local groups can adopt and adapt for their own campaigns:

Transit Equity Day Principles

Public Transit provides basic mobility for many in our communities. It is also essential urban infrastructure – just like roads, bridges, tunnels and utilities – that is crucial to the economic, social and environmental well-being of all our regions. 

Everyone has a right to a public mass transit system that includes:

1. Safe, reliable, environmentally-sustainable and affordable transit that is accessible to all, regardless of income, national origin, race, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, religion, or ability.
2. An affordable public transit system that reliably connects people in all communities to the places we need to travel: home, work, school, places of worship, shopping, health, and recreation in as efficient, and timely a manner as possible. We must ensure that all communities have access to transit. No community should be left out of access to transit. Public transit in rural, less densely populated communities should be provided despite the special challenges it presents in any master transportation plan.
3. Living wages, benefits, safe working conditions, and union rights for transit workers, including those who manufacture transit equipment, and access to family-sustaining transit jobs and training opportunities for people from underserved communities.
4. A just transition for workers and communities who are dependent on our current automobile and highway-centered transportation system, to ensure that no one is left behind as we transition to a more public, accessible, and cleaner transit-based system.
5. Rapid transition of our transit systems to electrified, non-polluting transit powered by electricity from renewables. This transition should be made for school buses also.
6. Safe, healthy and livable neighborhoods that are connected by public transportation and by bicycle pathways and sidewalks, and that are planned to expand safe access to transit and reduce single occupancy vehicle miles traveled.
7. Dedicated and sustainable public funding for public transit.

What will happen to workers in fossil fuel related industries if the shift to a climate-safe economy threatens their jobs?

While it is easy to advocate for a “just transition,” it is not so easy to spell out just how that can be accomplished. Proposals for a Green New Deal have often been criticized as too vague to provide protections that workers and unions can count on. AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, for example, told the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., “We would want a whole lot of changes made so that workers and our jobs are protected in the process.”

The Labor Network for Sustainability has just issued a briefing paper for trade unionists called “No Worker Left Behind: Protecting Workers and Communities in the Green New Deal.” The paper lays out the basic elements that have been proposed to protect the well-being of workers and communities who may be adversely affected by aspects of the GND and the transition to a climate-safe economy. It summarizes how each of the plans would go about protecting workers and communities whose jobs may be threatened. An Appendix provides excerpts from the texts from which these summaries are extracted.

The elements it includes are:

• Initial social safety net
• Workplace transition plan
• Wage guarantee/insurance
• Education and job training
• Priority job placement
• Pension and benefit support
• Health care
• Community investment

The briefing paper also addresses what these programs will cost and how we can pay for them.

“No Worker Left Behind” identifies policies that could be actionable by GNDs at national and state levels. It focuses on proposals that are or could be readily translated into legislation and executive orders. It presents a compendium of strategies and programs from which future shapers of the GND can select and combine to forge the best possible program to protect workers and communities.

If you missed it…

Check out: Labor Network for Sustainability’s Virtual Convergence 2: Labor Voices on the Green New Deal Recording

Panel Discussion on Lessons learned from state and local efforts, featuring:

• Seattle: Alec Connon, 350 Seattle and Lucas Zeppetello, United Automobile Workers Local 4121 

• Maine: Matt Schlobohm and Cynthia Phinney, Maine AFL-CIO

• Illinois: Theresa Yoon, Service Employees International Union Local 1 

• Los Angeles: Jennifer Kropke, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 11 / National Electrical Contractor Association

One year ago, 60 youth with the Sunrise Movement were arrested during a sit-in at House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. From that moment, their demand for a Green New Deal has electrified and challenged the climate and labor movements. It has become a prominent framework for climate action.  The GND calls for action at the scale of the crisis. It recognizes that transformative climate policy requires connecting to solutions to the income inequality crisis rather than offloading costs of climate action on regular people.  

Across the country, buoyed by a new generation of youth activism, labor, community and environmental justice coalitions are working on—and winning—transformative climate action at the local and state level.  Some directly borrow from the language of the Green New Deal, others move policies that connect climate solutions with income inequality solutions under different names. These local efforts across the country are not only crucial opportunities for experimentation but critical organizing spaces to build broader support for transformative climate action. 

Register or log into Zoom to watch Virtual Convergence 2 »

Future Virtual Convergences

Stay tuned in January 2020 for details about the upcoming Virtual Convergences:

• January: Transit Equity Day
• February: Climate Strikes
• March: Just Transition

The Labor Network for Sustainability has just issued a briefing paper called “The Juliana Youth Climate Case: What’s It Mean for Labor?” maintaining that a climate rights lawsuit against the US government by 21 youth plaintiffs provides unions a valuable opportunity to ally with youth climate activists.

In 2011 the non-profit organization Our Children’s Trust launched a legal campaign in 50 states and Federal court arguing that governments had violated Constitutional rights to life and liberty and their own obligations to protect the public trust. The suits argued that government action causing global warming violated the rights of the plaintiffs – young people and their posterity. These cases seek not damages but rather a court-ordered Climate Recovery Plan.

Two days after the election of Donald Trump as President, the Juliana 21 youth plaintiffs won a court ruling that could become a critical weapon in the struggle against climate change. In the Juliana case, Judge Ann Aiken of the federal district court in Oregon ruled that “the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.” A stable climate system is quite literally the foundation of society, “without which there would be neither civilization nor progress.” Judge Aiken also found that the facts alleged by the plaintiffs would constitute a violation of the government’s Constitutional obligation to protect the public trust – the essential natural resources, like air, water and the seas, on which we all depend.

As the Brown vs. Board of Education case helped build the civil rights movement, so too can judge Aiken’s ruling in the Juliana case be a crucial weapon for the climate protection movement, including the growing number of labor organizations that are becoming part of that movement. Read the LNS paper »

“As workers organizations we are faced with a very important responsibility. Social progress, has never come for free, without struggle from the people affected. This is also the case for climate protection. We need to fight for our place at the table and to see that our demands for climate justice are taken into account.”

That’s the message that the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) brought to the COP 25 climate conference of the world’s nations this December.

Trade Unions’ three “Topline Demands” for COP 25:

Raise ambition with Just Transition

Unions want decent jobs on a living planet. Building trust through the guarantees of Just Transition measures for all workers, their families and communities, will make it possible for governments to raise ambition. The 2019 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP25) must show the commitment of governments to step up ambition in their development of new climate plans, the Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) that are due in 2020.

Sign on to the “Climate Action for Jobs Initiative”

Unions urge governments to sign on to the “Climate Action and Jobs Initiative” launched at the September 2019 Climate Action Summit in New York. Unions need to be at the table so that the voice of workers that are affected by the climate crisis and climate polices are taken into account.

Commit to finance for low-carbon development, support the most vulnerable

Adequate climate finance is the cornerstone of effective climate policy. It is needed to ensure the low-carbon transition in the Global North and to put the Global South on a low carbon development path. Governments must live up to their promise to mobilize US $100 billion annually by 2020.

Find out more about what the international labor movement demanded at the Madrid COP and what organized labor is doing worldwide to combat the climate crisis »

The UC Berkeley Labor Center is recruiting for a full-time, Labor and Climate Policy Specialist to carry out new research, education, and field initiatives in the Green Economy Program, that seek to bridge the “jobs vs. environment” divide. Get more information. For questions, please contact Anhara Alexander at aalexander@berkeley.edu. UC Berkeley is an AA/EEO employer.